Surrey Cricket hunts shirt sponsor after AMP drops out

Surrey County Cricket is on the hunt for a shirt sponsor after troubled Australian financial services company AMP failed to renew its one-year sponsorship deal.

The club wants to match the £250,000 that AMP paid last season for one year or to sign a company up for a three-year package at about £700,000.

AMP has had a torrid period since September, when it emerged that Pearl, one of its life assurance arms, had breached its minimum capital requirements. This disclosure was followed by the sacking of its chief executive and the announcement of 3,000 redundancies.

The Surrey club’s corporate development director Nick Cooke claims that had it not been for these circumstances the sponsorship would have been renewed. He adds that one of the challenges facing Surrey as it looks for a new sponsor is to separate itself from negative cricket stories, such as the England team’s woeful performance and the controversy over its World Cup appearance.

Surrey, which has won seven trophies in seven years, has 14 international players and claims that its sponsorship would give a brand more than 100 hours of television coverage to an ABC1 audience.

AMP’s withdrawal from the shirt deal does not affect its naming rights deal for the Oval, Surrey’s home ground. The £1.6m deal has two years of a five-year contract to run.